Travels, Trials, and Turtles

Greetings Friends,

At long last, I return to the blogspot realm to tell of recent adventures and goings on. Because my keyboard has somehow decided to be French today, I will not be using contractions in this report because itÈs impossible to get the apostrophe working. Alas.
There has been much traveling going on...
- I went on a trip. Most of you know this. I went to Belgium to visit a girl I made friends with in first term. Her family were wonderful hosts- her 91 year old grandma was a delight and her Palestinian dad got super excited to make me vegan feasts of falafel, hummus (even at breakfast), and all sorts of great things with rice and eggplant and other delicacies- what a cook- three cheers for Numan! The whole family are very strong activists for Palestine and fired up my own feelings about the Middle East situation all over again. I also went to a very fancy poli. sci. department ball where the band rocked out in English and then yelled at the crowd in Flemish...
- I also went to Berlin! Actually, we both did. The food stories continue--- we had a vegan fast food restaurant in our little German hood that was quite mind blowing- especially for its seitan burgers. We went to a couple of cool museums including the one at the Stasi headquarters. The DDR museum was like stepping into Goodbye Lenin- very very interesting indeed. Our hostel was amazing- so clean, so small, so revisit-able--- if anyone is headed to Berlin, we have the spot to stay! Oooh and before I leave the Berlin food topic, there was a vegan supermarket near the fast food place that sold everything from shoes to seitan jerky.
- I also went to Turkey (notice how that rhymes with jerky). Hard to sum up that little venture in a few words... cruise on the Bosphorous (sp), the shrine to Rumi, numerous gorgeous mosques, GOOD FOOD, but the best part was our time with host families who were unbelievably generous and welcoming. I went with the Turkish society from the uni., by the way.
Then I came back and mom arrived the next day! We had a marvelous three weeks, interrupted by yet another trip for me- this time up to Durham for a National Drama conference that was inspirational and exhausting- and probably everything a conference is meant to be.
In sad news, I came home to find out that our goat had finally met the end of his days... RIP Rumi- now we have Chili who looks like a joker and apparently loves bagels and apples.
The guinea pigs appear to still be trucking along- kindly looked after by mom (and dad when mom was here)... Hammerstein had his honorary 6th birthday on May 14.
And now that mom is back home, its into full on work mode for me. I have a paper due in 2 weeks and then its all about the dissertation- technically til the fall. Still hoping to have an extra-curricular life, though, my cookbook is now being sold at Blackwells- the campus book store- and at some student guild outlets. Hurrah for that.
Guess who is turning 27 tomorrow- that is right- the Knox of Knox and Long- the Andrex among us... and he has some sweet (in all senses of the word) presents in his midst- shhh.
And what of the wooden spoon you ask... well, I went in today to give episode 2 the final once over and, low and behold, it is temporarily lost in the computer. I am trying to take this in stride- folks seem fairly confident that it can be found and if not- I still have the raw footage- but to edit all over again would put the release date to June sometime. SIGH!!!!
I have new hungry vegan articles you can check out though-
http://www.electric-stitch.com/archives/category/hungry-vegan
is the site to stay tuned to for a vegan glimpse into our fair city... I have another article to be posted there any day (yet, you have heard me say I will blog any day so if you do not trust me, fair enough!)
Also, if you are in Exeter on June 11th, go check out Easy Greens puppet show! I am working on the script right now but will divulge that involves a sea turtle, a bagasaurus, and of course my beloved Wizard Photovoltaic.

With lots of love and warm rays of sunny days,
STEPHANIE
reporting on behalf of the Stepheter and Andrex duo